Events (in Shanghai) that affect my life (and others')

Shi Shi Shi Shi – Chinese Pinyin

As many people knows, there are many different characters mapping to the same pronunciation. Thus, it is very hard to directly tell from a pronunciation what the original character is. Here is an interesting example, written by Zhao Yuan Ren in 1930.

If you directly use Pinyin to translate the article into something people from other countries can at least pronounce, just like people translate my name from my Chinese name to Wang Jian Shuo, here is the translation:

Shi Shi shi shi shi

Shishi shishi Shi Shi, shi shi, shi shi shi shi.

Shi shishi shi shi shi shi.

shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi.

Shi shi, shi Shi Shi shi shi.

Shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi shishi.

Shi shi shi shi shi shi, shi shishi.

Shishi shi, Shi shi shi shi shishi.

Shishi shi, Shi shi shi shi shi shi shi.

Shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi.

Shi shi shi shi.

I know it is nightmare to read it.

Here is my translation of the article (well, just roughly)

A poet with last name Shi living in a room made of stone,

loved lions, and sware to eat ten lions.

Shi often go to market to see lions.

At ten o’clock, it happened that ten lions came to the market.

At thsi time, it happened that this Mr. Shi came to the market.

Mr. Shi looked at the ten lions, and used the power of arch, killed the ten lions.

Mr. Shi picked up the body of the ten lions, and got to the stone room.

The stone room was wet, Mr. Shi asked servant wipe the stone room.

The stone room was done, Mr. Shi started to try to eat the body of the ten lions.

When he started eating, he found out the ten lion body were actually ten stone lion body.

Is the sound of each word exactly the same or there is a difference in the tone?

If the sound of each word is exactly the same, then you can only understand the poem when you read it. If someone recited the poem to you, you would have the same problem as reading it in pinyin.

If that is true, then there are poems that cannot be recited in Chinese at all. They can only be read

Pinyin is a representation of the sound of the language. A phonetic alphabet. If a language have too many words which sound is exactly the same, then purely phonetic system is useless,… unless enhanced in someway.

For example. In the same way in which some phonetic alphabets use special signs to indicate the right sound of a tone, special punctuation marks could be added to distinguish words with same sound but different meaning. That is similar to what it is done with Chinese characters, although in a different way.

You could have a Pinyin++.

But if my assumptions are correct, the problem of hearing that “shii” poem remains the same. You can understand it when you, buy not when you hear it.

Fascinating. If too many words do not differ at all in sound, only in Chinese character used, then the pinyin system would have to be augmented with extra characters and/or symbols to solve these phonetics ambiguities of the Chinese languages.

Just a pure phonetic alphabet seems not to be enough.

How this could be done, or if the end result would be easier or more conveniet to use than the Chinese characters (classic or simplified), I have no idea.

Also, I think calling this “fascinating” is a little disingenuous. Chinese having sentences that are unintelligible to the ear isn’t anything particular. English has a similar sentence – Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. This sentence can be made infinitely long using only “Buffalo” and “buffalo,” unlike the Chinese story. Anyway, what I want to say is that I can’t stand people who think things foreign are “fascinating” mostly because they’re foreign.

As to Mr. 也许知道, 平声和仄声是用来写诗的。平声是阴平阳平，其他（上去入）都是仄声。可是平仄不会告诉你一个字到底是哪个声哪个调，所以不能靠平仄来猜字。

“英文的文化含义更多的是外向，表面的，急于表达的。不像中国内在的，含蓄的，逻辑性强的。”

又是这套笼统的傻话。这才没有逻辑性。也没啥根据；这些东西人哪里能分得这么清楚？

Also, I don’t think you should be so dismissive of verb conjugation. Wouldn’t one think that the imperfect subjunctive in French has more internal (内在) meaning than a plain old one-form Chinese verb?

One common mistake of foreigners is that they think all languages are made up of alphabets. I think Chinese government should drop the romanised pinyin and instead use the old pinyin. What should Chinese conform to the western idea of having alphabets?

If the foreigners wanted to learn Chinese lets learn it without using the romanised pinyin. I wonder if Japanese have romanised japanese?

Sometime when I listened to the Chinese press conference, there are always translation comes with it. The French, British, Spain, Japanese, their government wouldn’t bother to provide translation. If the world want to know what the chinese government is trying to say they shoudl learn Chinese.

Hello @Soon – I would never have been able to read and write chinese characters without first learning by what u are calling “romainsed” pinyin… not sure what your problem is with this. It’s not about conforming to western ideas – it’s about breaking down barriers and making it easier for communication across borders. Furthermore, it’s not a “common mistake by foreigners that they think all languages are made up of alphabets”… it’s a common mistake by “some” foreigners. Kindest regards…

The Japanese do have romanized japanese, for learners of Japanese as a second language. As for over-use of pinyin within China and English translations of domestic news conferences (I assume you don’t mean international press conferences, because every country translates international stuff, even if the translations are given directly to the press rather than publicly released), you’ll have to take that up with the Chinese government. It’s not the foreigners who are writing the translations and romanizations you know.